Good inventory management is key to a successful business, and Odoo’s strong inventory management module is special in that it offers tools that make this easier. Product categorization is one of the main features—a system that keeps your company organized, tracks better, and improves overall inventory efficiency.
This guide is for everyone working with Odoo, dealing with inventory, or operating a business and wishes to enhance their operation. It will guide you through learning all about product classification in the latest version of Odoo. We will guide you through product category configuration and property setting in a step-by-step process.
Accessing Product Categories in Odoo
- Proceed to the Inventory section on your Odoo dashboard.
- Proceed to Configuration and select Product Categories from the dropdown.
- You will proceed to the Product Categories page. On this page, you can view, modify, or create new categories.
Constructing a Product Category
- Click the Create button on the Product Categories page.
- Select a category name that explicitly describes what the products are (e.g., “Electronics,” “Office Supplies,” or “Perishable Goods”).
- If it belongs, put it in a parent category. Parent categories help you organize a system, which is great for businesses with multiple products. For example, under “Electronics,” you could have “Laptops” and “Smartphones.”
- Choose your category type—this decides if the product can be stored, consumed, or is a service.
Organizing Categories for Large Inventories
- For large inventory businesses, careful organization of categories is required. Employ a mix of:
- Main Groups (like “Electronics”)
Subcategories (e.g., “Laptops,” “Cameras”) - This arrangement will ensure your stock is in order and manageable.
Setting Category Properties in Odoo
Once you’ve established your categories, the second equally important step would be to determine their properties. Odoo also lets you define some properties such as accounting rules, stock calculation rules, and costing rules against every product category. This is how it would function:
Costing Techniques
- Choose the Standard Price for a set price for every product.
- Choose FIFO (First-In-First-Out) if you sell your products in the order they are added to your stock.
- Average Cost to compute costs using average costs in the past.
- Selecting the appropriate costing method is crucial in maintaining accurate accounting records, particularly for firms with variable costs.
Stock Valuation
The Inventory Valuation field determines whether stock valuation is to:
- Manual (adjusted occasionally by accounting departments)
- Automated (automatically generated by Odoo according to pre-defined settings such as movements and sales)
- Automated valuation is a time-saver for large inventories.
Accounting Properties
- Create Expense Accounts to pay for expenses or cost-of-goods-sold (COGS).
- Identify Stock Input/Output Accounts to track items coming into or leaving inventory.
- Proper arrangement guarantees that each movement in your stock is appropriately reflected in your books.
How Product Categories Enable Automation of Workflows
Once product categories are correctly set up in Odoo, they give strong automation powers:
Reordering Rules: Simplify reordering by assigning reordering rules to specific categories.
Category-Specific Reports: Create reports by category performance, selecting insights most useful to your strategy.
Collaborate with Specialists, Enhance Your Operations
Using Odoo’s product categorization features is important for businesses that want to optimize their inventory procedures and make processes more efficient. Whether you are a new user installing the platform or an experienced user adjusting your settings, Odoo provides features that grow with your business.
If you want to do more than the basics, HSxTECH, an experienced Odoo expert, is here to help you optimize your inventory management. We will offer setup and custom configuration to make your business achieve the most from Odoo.
